Friday, March 13, 2015

“Racist Cops”

When the Black Panthers first
organized in Oakland in 1966—close to 50 years ago—their Ten
Point Program called for an end to (white) police brutality in black
neighborhoods. “ 7. We want an immediate end to police brutality
and murder of Black people, other people of color and all oppressed
people inside the United States.”

Fast forward to Ferguson and we see
the same demand, louder to be sure, but still the same demand.

Nothing has changed in the last
59 years.
How can we have a Black president, a Black Attorney General, a Black
Supreme Court Justice but nothing is changed for the Black kids on
the block?

How can we explain this to
ourselves? What lessons can we draw for changing this disgraceful
situation?

Many people give a two-word answer:
“Racist Cops” thereby oversimplifying a complex situation. They
make it impossible to make change because they are not willing to
think carefully about why police rampages continue in Black communities.

“Racist Cops” is as biased a
statement as what many whites say or think about young Black men
being unwilling to work, being unwilling to take responsibility for
their actions. The one statement, as much as the other accuses large
numbers of people of negative attitudes. As long as each sides
parades its prejudices, we cannot move forward.

It has struck me for a while that
when policemen shoot at young Black men they appear to shoot to kill,
not to disable, not to throw off their presumed attackers. Individual
policemen do not make up the rules. Their shooting to kill must be
approved by police chiefs, by the mayors and city councils to whom
the police chief answers. The racism here is not limited to the
police but to the people who run our cities and towns.

Some of these people, for instance
city councilors, are elected. The permission for policemen to shoot
to kill has not to my knowledge ever been an issue in city elections.
How many citizens have quizzed their city-council candidates on that
issue? Ordinary voters are involved, however peripherally, in making
rules for police conduct. White liberals who say “Racist Cops”
are evading their own complicity.

Michelle Alexander has been writing
and speaking eloquently about the mass incarceration of young Black
men. Studies show that among young men, Whites are as often involved
in trading and/or using marijuana than Blacks. But Blacks are six
times as likely to be incarcerated as whites.

Here is where the “racist cops”
explanation is seriously incomplete. Policemen make the arrest. But
it is the prosecutor who asks for a long prison sentence, preferably
for a felony conviction. A judge instead of chastising the
prosecutorial staff, cooperates and sends the young man away for five
years.

Prisons are often private
enterprises whose profits go up with every additional prisoner.
Prison corporations are known to lobby legislature for increasing
mandatory sentences, and
legislatures cooperate. The
main
motivations are familiar capitalist desires to increase profits;
racism is not the main issue.

Prisoners come under the care of
parole officers at the end of their terms.

Here are prosecutors, judges,
legislatures and the parole system—all of whom see every day the
overwhelming preponderance of prisoners of color, but no one raises
an alarm. The entire judicial and the entire criminal justice system
cooperate in perpetrating gross injustices. If we were satisfied to
blame the policemen's racism we would miss completely the pervasive
injustices encountered at every turn in our system of legislation,
law enforcement and “corrections.”

But there is more.

It is a commonplace that “everyone
commits crimes—only the poor get punished for it.” Unable to pay
for a good lawyer, the poor are inadequately represented in court,
often by lawyers completely unprepared for mounting a serious
defense. Many localities jail people for not paying fines. Poor
people unable pay fines return to prison. Middle class people and the
rich pay and get on with their life.

The problems of young Black men with
the criminal justice system have to do with a complex system corroded
by racial injustices. But those difficulties are intensified by the
pervasive poverty of the same Black young men. Our society is unfair
to people doing the low-paying jobs. One large source of the
injustices perpetrated against young black men and more and more
against black women is the result of our economic system which
produces increasing numbers of poor people.

If we strive for racial justice, we
must stop putting all the blame on the police. We must call out the
gross failures of the economic system to provide a decent living for
every hard working citizen, and the failure of that same economic
system to provide decent employment for everyone. We must also see
clearly that prosecutors, judges, legislatures, in cities, states and
at the federal levels and voters are all involved in this by refusing
to challenge the ongoing injustices of the criminal and judicial
system.

It
is just too easy to say “Racist Cops.” The troubles of Blacks in
the US are much more extensive and what I have mentioned so far is
only a small part of the entire range of persecutions and
inequalities.

Predominantly white legislatures in
most states have passed laws that disenfranchise felons. In Ferguson
a third or more of Blacks are convicted felons who cannot vote. That
is one reason why a city with a Black majority of 67% is governed by
an elected white City Council, a White city manager, a white police
chief and a predominantly white police force.

Felons, however, are not only
disenfranchised. More often than not they cannot find work. They
cannot work—except in some illegal activity. They are unable to
maintain their families. Trying to do so will soon land them in jail
again.

In
recent days a research institute at Brandeis documented the sharp
rise in unequal asset ownership between whites and Blacks. The report
states that ”in
2011 the median White household had $111,146 in wealth holdings,
compared to just $7,113 for the median Black household and $8,348 for
the median Latino household”--a difference of more than $100,000.00
in assets!--reflecting many factors, among them residential
segregation in our cities which, in turn, reflects racial
discrimination. But it also reflects the lower wages earned by many
Blacks, the glaring inadequacy of many schools in Black
neighborhoods. And, of course, it also reflects once again the
mass-incarceration of young Blacks and the economic disaster a felony
conviction is.

The
list of restraints imposed on persons of color seems to have no end.